Human-Animal Interactions

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-0720(15)31156-7Get rights and content

The objective of this article is to discuss the human-animal relationship in animal production, emphasizing the importance of this relationship to the productivity and welfare of the animal, some of the factors that may regulate the relationship, and how to manipulate this relationship to improve the productivity and welfare of the animal.

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  • Cited by (72)

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      2020, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      The evaluation of the human-pig relationship has often been done in individual tests in novel environments, after a period of familiarisation to the novel environment. In this tests, positive regular tactile contacts, such as stroking, brushing, and scratching reduce pigs’ fear of humans expressed by a higher distance to the human, more movements and longer time spent looking at the experimenter or gazing (Hemsworth and Barnett, 1987; Tallet et al., 2014; de Oliveira et al., 2015) and increase approach behaviour like the time spent close to the human and positive interactions like sniffing, jumping on the human knees (Tallet et al., 2014; Brajon et al., 2015b). Pigs have a well-developed sense of hearing (42 Hz to 40.5 kHz (Heffner and Heffner, 1990)) and human vocal productions (40 Hz to 1.5 kHz) fit within their auditory spectrum.

    • Mutual interactions between cognition and welfare: The horse as an animal model

      2019, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
      Citation Excerpt :

      The same horses were observed during stall cleaning by their usual caretaker: horses that threatened their caretaker had more chances to threaten the unfamiliar person during the test while those that showed investigative behaviours did so too in the tests. This study reveals that 1) there was a clear generalization of human “representation” as a source of positive or negative emotions, 2) negative states override positive ones (see also Hemsworth and Barnett, 1987), 3) negative reactions were related to human approach, and especially in association with work-related objects. These results confirm earlier findings revealing that reactions to unfamiliar persons depend on the caretaker (Hausberger and Muller, 2002) but differ from those of Lansade and Bouissou (2008) who found that positive reactions at the MP test were predictive of positive reactions in other tests.

    • Comparison of methods to assess fear of humans in commercial breeding gilts and sows

      2016, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      A human approach test (labelled here ‘HAT’), which measures the approach behaviour of pigs individually held in a test arena to a stationary experimenter, has been used extensively by Hemsworth and Coleman (2011) to study fear of humans in pigs. This approach to assess an animal’s fear of humans is supported by the findings of behavioural and physiological correlates in the HAT (Hemsworth et al., 1987; Hemsworth and Barnett, 1987), together with findings that imposition of handling treatment designed to differentially affect an animal’s fear of humans generally produced the expected variations in the behavioural responses of the pigs to humans in this test (see Hemsworth and Coleman, 2011). In a review of the assessment of the HAR, Waiblinger et al. (2006) concluded that while few tests of fear of humans were validated, tests measuring an animals' behavioural response to either a stationary or approaching human have to contend with possible competing motivations such as curiosity or exploration.

    • Effects of human contact and toys on the fear responses to humans of shelter-housed dogs

      2014, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      Fear can be considered as an undesirable emotional state of suffering that functions to protect the animal through defensive behaviour or escape and is elicited by the perception of actual or perceived danger (Toates, 1980; Jones and Waddington, 1992; Hemsworth and Coleman, 2011). The behavioural responses associated with fear include withdrawal, or avoidance responses, as well as immobility, such as freezing or crouching (Hemsworth and Barnett, 1987; Jones, 1987; Mills and Faure, 1990). The physiological responses associated with fear include responses of the sympatho-adrenal medullary system (e.g. secretions of adrenalin and noradrenalin) and the hypothalamo-pituitary adrenal system (HPA axis e.g. secretions of corticosteroid hormones, cortisol and corticosterone) (Hemsworth and Coleman, 2011).

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